The backbiting Customer Care Agent

Dear telecom customer care providers do not assume that all your customers are complete idiots. When a customer calls you with a query I understand that you must receive many silly requests from naive and ill informed or under educated people on a daily basis. However, do not punish everyone else for their shortcomings. Here is one such dialogue that I had with an agent from one of the leading telecom companies in Uganda.

Customer Care Agent: “Hello this is .... Customer care, can I help you,” said the agent in a bored tone.

Me: “Hello I have a complaint.”

Customer Care Agent: “Yes.”

Me: “I loaded a bundle a few days ago but today the balance on my bundle went from 630 mb to 220 mb in 5 minutes.”

Customer Care Agent: “Are you sure you did not use the bundle.”

Me: “No I did not; I don’t think checking for date bundle status uses data does it?” I said sarcastically.

Customer Care Agent: “Okay, Is this number?”

Me: “Yes!”  I responded.

Customer Care Agent: “Let me check...” she said and responded after about a minute of holding the line, “Hello, you used the bundle.”

Me: “When was that?”

Customer Care Agent: “I am seeing here there is no problem with your account you used your bundle. I can even see an additional 500mb today.

Me: “Yes I activated a new bundle when I could not utilise the old one.”

Customer Care Agent: “Okay, but madam you used the bundle. I don’t know what page or site you opened but it took 400mb.”

Me: “400mb on one page.”

Customer Care Agent: “Yes.”

Me: “Are you aware that I could not use my data bundle from yesterday late evening from 8 pm to today 6 pm about 10 minutes ago because your network was undergoing technical difficulties.” I could not even find a signal or make any phone calls!”

Customer Care: “I don’t know about that but I know you used your bundle.”

Me: “So in other wards I am not getting a reimbursement for the bundle I lost.”

Customer Care: “But you used the bundle so how can I replace it when you used it,” she said.

Having wasted 30 minutes trying to get a hold of customer care and an additional 10 minutes on the line waiting for her to check and recheck my account with no positive feedback I decided I had better allocate my time to other more important things.

Me: “Alright I don’t want to waste time, thank you and good night.”

Customer Care Agent: “Thank you for calling ....  Telecom,” she responded but did not hang up I assume expecting me to hang up.

She then turned to a college and began to back bite me without hanging up the phone.

Customer Care Agent: “Eh also these people who don’t have money and want free airtime all the time, bankowa nyo.”

Me: “...” I decided not to even indulge her further and simply hung up to give her enough time to gossip with her colleague. So is this why we cannot get through to customer care most of the time and dear agent if you think your job is tiresome and such a bother why don’t you resign and leave it for someone else who is in dire need of employment and save our souls.